MR. MILLAR IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 81, 7 April 1910, Page 8

MR. MILLAR IN AUSTRALIA.

(From Our Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, 29th March. Mr. Millar and his aid, Mr. M'Villy, on their Railway tour of inspection, reached! Sydney on Easter Monday, when the city is crowded with tourists from all parts of Australia, and beds in hotels and boarding-houses are at a premium. Mr. Millar is staying iwith relatives. Besides his special business .he will try and make the trip one of rest and recreation from the strain of administrative labour. His programme is not yet definite, but after seeing the New South Wales Commissioners and official heads, examining methods and searching out money-sav-ing wrinkles, he will go either north to Brisbane or south to Melbourne and Adelaide, and there do likewise. Perhaps the southern trip may be made tirst, in order to get to Brisbane when the weather is cooler. However, there is not much difference between, Adelaide and Brisbane at this season ; but many people prefer Brisbane, because the heat were is less moist. I say "heat," because it seems "heat" to a New Zealander- From an Australian point of view the weather just now is delightful. In all tropical and sub-tropical climates, the rule of health is to take exercise enough to keep our grand secretory organ, the skin, perspiring freely. That, done, the average man suffers little inconvenience. Mr. Millar was interviewed by the Sydney papers on arrival, and forecasted again a splendid railway reveuuo this year, with a gain of a quarter of a million on his estimate. This increase I is greatly due to this year's advanced season. Grain and wool have come forward several weeks earlier than usual, and as prices have been good, they have come forward freely, to the railways' profit. Coal also takes its share of the railways increase — in fact, this has been a good freight year all round ; and, owing to the warm weather, the last quarter has taken some of next year's ordinary traffic. The promised two per cent, decrease in the ratio of railways expenses to revenue is likely to be bettered. Mr. Millar spoke of the promising work that is being done by the Conciliation Councils ; and, mutatis mutandis> he repeated Mr. Wade's recent complaint of "not enough news" passing between New Zealand and Australia. "We see little Australian news in the New Zealand press," he said. "The Commonwealth and the Dominion have many interests in common, yet we get lone * accounts of happenings in America and on the Continent that do not interest the New Zealand public, and hardly' any Australian news at all. A lot of space is devoted to foreign murders and the like, which have no immediate bearing on Australasian affairs. Tho thing the public most wants it doesn't get. 1 have the same complaint respecting New Zealand news n the Australian press." The fact is, in my opinion, that each country needs interpretation to the other. Each is inclined to be a little bit parochial, and editors naturally endeavour to "hit the people where they live." It is as difficult to interest Australians in New Zealand as it is to interest New Zealanders in Australia. /Then, newspaper space, in these prosperous advertising times, is usually filled with local matter ; and when the local field is covered there is not always room to cultivate the other side of the Tasman Sea. It must be remembered that, to a Sydney man, Queensland and South Australia, for example, are nearly as much in provincial darkne&a as iew Zealand is. The greater interest, though not the greater value, of the Australian world gravitates between Sydney and Melbourne.